"The Ballpark Dog Diet" Book

"The Ballpark Dog Diet" Book

Greetings. I am a writer with MLB.com and am researching a book for 2005 (hopefully) that celebrates the hot dog's place in baseball in a big way. Thirty million ballpark dogs will be consumed in the Majors next season, and the Dodger Dog leads the way in terms of season sales (it even has its own bobblehead doll). I wrote a <a href=&quot http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/news/mlb_news.jsp?ymd=20040831&content_id=843024&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp">"Ode to the Hot Dog"</a> story on our site recently that drew so many emails with great baseball memories and opinions about the best dogs that I decided this has to be a book.

I just joined this forum with the sole purpose of learning more about your thoughts on Ballpark Dogs and I hope you will feel free to email me at mark.newman@mlb.com with your thoughts about any of the following subjects. I may be interested in including you in the book, which is tentative in proposal stage at the moment.

For "ballpark dogs", I am including everything from a Fenway Frank to a Chicago-style dog at Wrigley to the 20 different varieties at Turner Field to brats like the ones I eat at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and the legendary sausages of Milwaukee.

1. Why do hot dogs taste best at a ballpark? Is it simply because of the rite of passage -- father bought you one there, his father bought him one there, and so on? What exactly is it?

2. Which stadiums have the best dogs and why?

3. (most important to me) What special memories does the ballpark dog evoke for you? Maybe it was the first time your dad took you to a big-league game. Maybe you remember details about the game, the setting, who won, favorite player, etc.

4. Eating habits. When do you eat a ballpark dog? Right when you show up? Between innings? Ketchup or mustard (list your age if you respond to that). What special art form do you have for eating a ballpark dog? The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council says a regular dog is to be eaten in five bites, and a foot-long seven. Some people are pretty serious about this stuff!

I'm no expert on ballpark dogs. I've only tried them in 2 ballparks (Griffith Stadium in Washington DC many many years ago and in SBC Park here in SF more recently). Still, I pretty much love hot dogs anywhere and everywhere and normally I eat them with just mustard and raw onions. An exception might be in Chicago if that giardinaria was available--I really like that on hot dogs if it's the authentic Chicago stuff (substitutes from elsewhere don't seem the same). At a ballpark, I would most likely get a dog (or two) between innings, not immediately upon arrival unless I had skipped the preceeding meal (lunch for an afternoon game, dinner for an evening game)--then I might just be hungry enough to grab one on the way to my seat.

Mark, check out www.amnh.org/exhibitions/baseball/hotdogs/ for legenday franks from ballparks in the U.S. There are some other sites that go into greater detail on this subject. Recently, Vienna Beef hot dogs have become the official hot dog of the Green Bay Packers. They're sold in retail stores throughout Wisconsin marketed as Lambeau Field Dogs.

Thanks for the "link" -- I've seen that one and also read the Baseball as America book (recommended). I try to stay away from that webpage because it only makes me hungry. Especially that Cincinnati Cheese Coney.